Heave Ho!
by Rose Black
Summary: A beautiful young serving girl goes after the crew of the Black Pearl...along with her stocky, unlovely fellow servant. JackOC? Everyone hopes not.
1. Chapter One

Heave Ho!

Disclaimer: Of course, I don't own PotC. I am not a pirate. I am not a published author. I am not J K Rowling, either, even though this isn't that fandom.

It was a dark and stormy night. Rain slashed at the windows as thunder rolled and crashed. Ann, standing in the kitchen with her arms in soapy dishwater, was glad that she lived in her mistress's home—one never knew what could happen, walking outside on a night like this.

It is probably best to get things like this over with, and quickly, so that the real story can begin. Ann was of middling height and square build. She wasn't slim and lissome, with a generous bosom and a curvy waist—not many of the servants were truly good looking, as hard work and meager living since childhood were apt to cause things like large muscles, rough hands, and a certain sheepness of mind, which did nothing for the looks. She had straggly brownish hair, and a sort of muddy, hazelish eye color. Her nose was prominent, her arms were brawny, and her chest was flat enough that she could probably impersonate a husky man, if she so chose. She had a ruddy face, and her feet were generally planted apart to help keep her balance while doing difficult tasks.

Mrs. Mooney was a fair mistress; she didn't ask too much of her servants, but she didn't hand out fat bonuses every Christmas, either. Ann had been sent over from Shropshire, where her father kept cows and sheep. She was ostensibly sent to become a wife to a nice-young-man who had settled down with a trade and enough money to get a house, yet needed a woman, though this had seemed unlikely even back at home. (In fact, her father had said under his breath, "And pity the poor, nearsighted lad as takes you," before she left.) After three months at Mistress Lovett's Rooming for Marriageable Young Ladies, Mistress Lovett had found her a place with Mrs. Mooney, where the hours weren't too bad and the beds weren't too buggy, and one of the stableboys sometimes tried to tumble her. Life was comfortably all right. And now we may return to the story.

Trinn, the only servant Ann had ever seen who was truly beautiful, waltzed by with an armload of dried china dishes to be put back into the cupboard in the dining room. Trinn—Ann wasn't quite sure what her name was; something like Katryna, she knew—was excruciatingly wonderful. She was slim, lissome, she had everything, in short, that Ann lacked. The stable lads treated her like a china doll; you could bet that _her_ father never pitied her future husband. That was also because her father had been hanged, when she was seven, for the crime of piracy. Trinn hated pirates with a fiery vengeance, and looked pale and sorrowful whenever some notice of them was read from the paper; she seemed to regard the pirates as killing her father, though Ann thought it more likely to have been the fault of the governor. Trinn had sultry red curls, to match her fiery vengeance, and flashing green eyes that could pierce a man's heart while his wife stood nearby, fuming. Yet, somehow, no-one (except the jealous wives and Ann) could look beyond the exterior to see the conniving, nasty little brat inside.

Everyone else had gone to bed already, as Ann had volunteered to finish the dishes and Trinn had, as she said while picking up a handful of wet cutlery, "_so_ wanted to be helpful." Ann had no idea why she should suddenly choose now to be helpful, but she was grateful to her for taking some of the work. Ann was forever looking for good things in people, even when there was no reason to believe any good existed. Perhaps Trinn was meeting a man at a quarter to nine in the middle of a storm.

The thunder seemed to grow just a bit louder and more percussive. It was possible that the storm had gotten even closer, but now that Ann thought about it, it sounded less like thunder and more like…cannon fire? Could it possibly be—pirates? They'd have to be mind-bogglingly stupid pirates, to be out sailing on a night like this. Though, really, the thunder had disguised the cannons very well. There wasn't much reason to panic, as pirates had never before penetrated Mooney House—the late Mr. Mooney had built it solidly and staffed it with many guardsmen. Ann sighed inwardly. She hoped that someone was near Trinn to keep her from rushing out, blade in hand, to attack the pirates single handedly. Which was, to say the least, idiotic.

And, Ann noted, was happening right now.

Trinn ran into the room, brandishing one of the swords from over the fireplace in the main dining room. She had a vaguely mad expression on her face, and paused in her dash from the room to strike a pretty pose, holding the sword aloft, and cried, "I must go to avenge my father!" The sword, which glinted dangerously, was, Ann knew, made of a fairly flimsy metal and probably couldn't cut through paper. Trinn then turned, tossed her scarlet curls, and dashed out into the rain.

_Oh, bother_, thought Ann, as she made a pointless attempt to dry her hands and rushed out after her.

The streets were dark, but they were filled with a flood of people and rainwater. As Trinn was heading for the source of the confusion, Ann had to battle her way through the crowds like a salmon heading up a waterfall. She realized, belatedly, that she had no weapon and was heading to almost certain death or Worse Than Death, but it was rather too late to go back now. The other servants would have locked and barred the doors by now, and it was likely that a pirate would get her before she made it home anyway. There wasn't too much to worry about from the Worse Than Death area; if any pirate meant that, he'd take one look at her and probably throw her in the sea.

Without warning, Ann ran into a ring of pirates, swords out and sense of decency and kindness left at home. The loss of the pressure of a thousand moving bodies caused her to stumble into the figure—a familiar, red-tressed figure—standing in the middle of the ring. As Trinn fell to one side, one of the pirates knocked her sword out of her hand; it bounced as it hit the ground, but Trinn could not notice, as she was now held over the pirate's shoulder. Her squalls were met with coarse laughter and ribald suggestions.

Another pirate had pressed Ann up against a wall, his none-too-clean dagger to her throat. His eyes raked her body, and she waited for some sort of crude comment to come to his lips. Instead, laughter seemed to spring from him in a way that would have been described as jolly, if he did not have a grimy dagger waving around in the area of Ann's chin. He put his dagger away and groped at the upper front of her dress, and Ann blushed in mortification. Perhaps she had been wrong about Worse Than Death.

After a few moments, the pirate managed to get some words out. "You could have done with a bit more padding, laddie. Though the whole thing was useless from the get-go, a great strapping lad like you. You'll want a bit better way to escape from them as know a woman's body. Eh, boys?" All of the pirates chortled as Ann blushed in the depths of now-extreme mortification. "Truth be told, though, you _are_ a strapping lad. Davy!" He motioned with his head to one of the other pirates, who stepped up beside her, drew his sword, and rapped her smartly on the head with the hilt. She pitched forward into blackness and the pirate holding her against the wall.

When Ann awoke, she tried to roll over, but couldn't. And it wasn't because Mary Butterworth, the scullery maid, was taking up more than her share of the bed, either. For some reason, her hands were tied together and to a pole. At last she opened her eyes, and looked about her. She was on a ship. The pole was a mast. This seemed extremely odd, until her jumbled senses finally returned to their proper order, and she recalled last night's events. She craned her upper body and neck as far as they would go, and ascertained that Trinn was on the other side, and had also been knocked out. Ann supposed that the pirates had valued speed over pleasure, and had taken her back for later. _They'll probably free her, or let her become some sort of female pirate,_ she thought with a little rancor. _And they'll keep me here to wash the dishes._ That was how things worked with Trinn.

As she was thinking, the pirates began to gather in a wide circle around the mast. One of them strolled up to the captives. He was definitely an odd one, Ann decided. Instead of just letting his hair grow long, lank, and greasy, he let it grow long, lank, and greasy and then braided beads into it. His eyes were lined with some dark sort of paint—Ann had never even seen one of the town harlots with that much paint. Overall, he had an air of one treading the line between sanity and madness. Though, she reflected, he certainly did have an air of command about him.

The pirate went to Trinn first. He knelt down—_Nice boots_, Ann noted—and cut Trinn's hands loose from the mast, though he left them bound together. He then propped the girl up against the mast closer to Ann's right and caressed the vermilion curls that framed Trinn's face. Gradually she came around, and took note of her surroundings, especially of the bearded pirate directly in front of her.

"How _dare_ you touch me!" she shrieked. The other pirates laughed raucously, but their probable leader only raised an eyebrow. "I mean it—you are the dirtiest, lowest, most _disgusting_ pack of sheep's droppings that I have ever seen in my life!"

Ann hoped that someone would hit Trinn on the head before she got them both killed. Although the pirates didn't seem to mind being vilified by the red-head; perhaps they looked at her idiocy as proof of spirit. The pirate stroking Trinn's hair stopped and moved a few feet around the mast until he stood in front of Ann. He looked at her, then back at his men. He glanced, puzzled, at her front, and then turned fully around to face the other pirates. He then placed his hands on his hips and bellowed, "All right, then! Which of you dogs picked up this lad?"

The scruffily bearded pirate who had held his dagger to Ann's throat the night before spoke up. "'Twas me, Cap'n," he said with a proud lilt to his voice. "'E was dressed as a woman, but I could see right through 'im." The man next to him, who Ann remembered as Davy, nudged him in the side. "Oh, and Davy 'ere helped."

"So, you, Mr. Hawkins, and Davy, are responsible for our new acquisition." The Captain seemed to be enjoying himself. "A fine big lad, to help with the heavy work and the fighting." There was a rumble of assent through the crowd. "The only trouble being," he continued, "that the lad ain't a lad."

The crowd rumbled again, this time in astonishment. Mr. Hawkins looked absolutely dumbfounded, and Davy's mouth dropped open. "Not a lad?" Hawkins stammered. "But 'e—"

"Yes—up you get, lass." The leader cut her bonds and pulled her by the hand until she stood. "What's your name, then?"

"Ah—Ann." This was unnerving. Evidently, the pirates didn't mean any harm to her—why else would they untie her? In an uncharitable moment, she hoped that she would come out of the whole thing better than Trinn, but then regretted it, and made herself hope that they would both end up all right.

"And as you aren't going to become an able-bodied seaman, we'll be putting you ashore as soon as possible. Your friend, on the other hand," he sent Trinn a glance that made him look as though he were having some indigestion, "will be staying with us."

Oh, bother again. Ann couldn't very well leave Trinn here to face a fate Worse Than Death, but there didn't seem to be any way to save her. Well…there didn't seem to be any way to _save_ her, but she could keep her from being alone on the ship with dozens of strange, rough men.

"Wait!" she commanded, and was surprised to see that the captain actually turned around from his scrutiny of the nearly-spitting Trinn.

"You—you can't drop me ashore at anyplace I could possibly get home from: the navy'd pick you up for sure. And if you leave me in any of the pirate dens, I'll be in horrible danger—and you all really seem like quite nice pirates, actually, who wouldn't do that to a serving wench, I'm sure; and you might as well have kept me aboard. So why don't you?"

"What?" he asked, tearing his eyes away from the cursing redhead.

"Keep me on board."


	2. Chapter Two

Chapter Two

_"Keep me on board."_

"And what would you do on board?" asked the captain. "Got a plan, have you?"

"Um, well … I could cook. Or mend clothes." Ann decided not to tell them that her mending skills were minimal; from the look of the pirates' clothes, she was at least better than they were. "Or I could do heavy work. Lifting and such. Things that _she_," she gave Trinn a meaningful look, "could not do. So you could put her back on land again, right?"

The captain looked over at Trinn, who had mercifully gone silent. He was giving her the look of a man who had been starving for six weeks and had just caught sight of a large plate of mashed potatoes. This did not seem to be a normal expression for him; the rest of the crew were looking at him strangely as well, and one could see that, though they tried to hide it from their captain, internal eyebrows were being raised. Ann coughed, and he snapped back.

"Well," he said, "how about we strike a bargain?"

"What sort of a bargain?" Whatever it was, Ann was fairly confident that she would come out on top. People tended to give in after a little of her unyielding implacability, and their price always became, eventually, her price. The pie-man with the stall near the smithy closest to Mistress Lovett's had tried to bargain with her once, and the growing circle of customers surrounding them had found it extremely entertaining.

"You become a pirate, and I shall consider putting this … fiery-locked beauty ashore."

"No. That's—that's absolutely preposterous. I don't know anything about sailing!"

"You'll learn. You're strong enough to do heavy work, you said, and you look it. It's mostly just fighting. We'll get a pair of breeches on you and you'll do as well as a man."

"I don't _know_ how to fight! Are you even listening to me, you stupid man?" Though the crew collectively gasped, the captain did not notice: his eyes had wandered back to Trinn. "And _breeches_! You think I'm going to wear breeches? Trousers, at least. _Loose_ trousers."

"We're agreed, then." He held out his hand. Ann took it without really noticing until they had shaken. There was something about him, something so fascinatingly odd that had gotten past her bargaining wall.

"There's got to be some sort of time limit," said Ann, not wanting to give up that easily. "I will be a pirate for three months—"

"Six."

"_Three_. And then we will both go."

"Well, you see," he said, "that's not going to be quite possible. After you've been a pirate, you'll be a wanted—" he glanced at Trinn, "—woman."

"You tricked me, you—"

The captain shook his head slowly, the metallic objects in his hair clicking and clacking together. "You tricked yourself. And from now on," he grinned, his gold teeth glistening, "you'll refer to me as 'Captain'. And you are?"

Ann glared, seething. "Ann Mobberly. And _she_ is…she is…we call her Trinn."

Trinn spat at the Captain and stared up into his eyes defiantly. "I am Katryna Athelwine Samar Pridmore." A few of the pirates sniggered. She glared at them all, holding her gaze on the captain longest although he had not laughed—instead, he had a rather sickening expression again. His eyes were definitely smoldering now. They looked ready to burst into flames, nearly. Ann decided that she'd better step in.

"I'm sorry, but what are you planning to do with Trinn?"

The captain snapped out of his daze once again.

> > > > > > >

That night, Ann lay in her hammock, glad to be off her legs. It had been a very instructive day: she had learned to reef sails and tie several new knots and she had also been kept running, as junior member of the crew, to fetch and carry. She had given in to the men's clothing, and apparently, as she was being treated like a man work-wise, she was also rooming with them in the forecastle.

Trinn was, against both of the women's protests, sleeping in the captain's quarters. Ann had the vague suspicion that she was meant to be sleeping in the captain's bed, but everything would go Trinn's way, as usual, so there would be no point in worrying about her. She could hear faint shouts from the captain's room, but they finally stopped after five minutes or so.

The pirate in the hammock closest to hers looked over and grinned. "How was your first day as a pirate, laddie?" That nickname had sprung up quicker than Ann had thought possible- it was as if it had crept from mind to mind all over the ship.

"All right," she replied, "but I can't say much for the food." The pirate chortled, showing his few teeth.

"Old Grimer's not the best cook, but 'e's a sight better than anyone else on this ship." A thoughtful expression crossed his face. "D'you suppose that Trinn girl can cook?"

Ann rolled her eyes and looked at the ceiling. "Probably. She can do just about everything else, except maybe gain weight." She looked over at the pirate. "Sorry- who are you?"

"Name's Fladger." He held out his hand and Ann stretched hers out to meet it. "And you're Ann Mobberly. Very nice to make your acquaintance, I'm sure," he said with agrin. "Do y'know what shift it is, lad?"

Ann yawned and stretched her arms. "Fourth, I think."

He nodded. "That's me up for a watch, then." He slowly heaved himself up out of his hammock and shambled to the door. As he opened it, he turned to look at Ann. "Get some sleep, now. You'll be up again for the sixth shift."

> > > > > > > >

The next morning, Ann was sent to the galley to assist the cook, Old Grimer, despite all of her protests.

"I thought I was a pirate, now! I thought I wasn't being treated as a woman!"

"Most junior man always helps the cook," said the first mate, with a rather strange look on his face. Ann continued to fume.

"Yes, and?"

"Well…" he leaned in closer, "perhaps, you being female and all, you'd know a bit more about cooking, then?"

Grimer was not very pleased at the second addition to his staff- Trinn had also been assigned to his supervision. Davy, who had taken Trinn down to the galley, tried futilely to explain why she was being put there.

"Ever since we lost Red and Billy two weeks ago, we've been short men!" he said desperately. "Mobberly can't stay down here all the time, he's needed above! I mean," he glanced nervously at Ann, "she. Sorry, just used to it," he added in an aside.

"I will not have my galley filled with fluttering women!" Grimer roared.

Davy gave a gusty sigh. "Mobberly isn't fluttering. Treat…her like any of the men. And the other lady will be a great help, I'm sure." Ann noticed that Davy didn't seem to have any problems remembering that Trinn was a woman.

While Davy argued with the cook, Ann rolled up her sleeves and began to wash some dirty pots. Trinn generally bustled about until several pots were cleaned, at which point she set one full of water to boil. As Grimer looked around- Davy had just made a rather good point- "Just look! They're being useful already!"- Ann was scrubbing and peeling potatoes, while Trinn stirred and tasted the few prepared potatoes that had already been put into the water.

Grimer rested his eyes on Ann. "I see we've a one who knows what to do. And another." He graced Trinn with an unfavorable glance, though her native charm still kept him from outright hostility.

After he was assured that Ann and Trinn could manage boiled potatoes and beef on their own, Old Grimer headed out to stand on deck and get "a few drops of grog" in him. When they were at last alone, Trinn decided to unburden herself to Ann.

"Oh, Ann, you'll never believe it!" _I probably will_, thought Ann. It was likely to be a paean to Trinn's remarkable beauty and wit in some form. "Last night, that horrible Sparrow man led me to his bedchamber, intending to ravish me within. But when he sat on the bed and began to," she shivered deliciously, "remove his clothing, I stood tall and straight and firm and told him that under no circumstances would I give up my virginity to a filthy, unwashed pirate-" _Filthy is the same as unwashed-_ "though, really, Ann, it was quite difficult to say no, as his naked chest was simply stunning, and those deep chocolate _orbs_… And then we shouted at each other for quite a bit. I hate him, you know. And finally he gave in to some long-forgot bastion of gentility somewhere inside of him and let me have his bed while he slept on the floor. I think," she said with a shrewd look on her face, "that I could reform him. And anyways, he said that I was going to have to stay on this boat for a long time. Actually, he said 'ship', but it very obviously annoyed him when I called this miserable, rotting hulk a boat. What was its name again?" She asked the last with a very carefree air, as though it mattered not a whit to her what it was called; she was definitely far above any sort of consideration of the name of the ship on which she was currently imprisoned.

Ann could not resist. "It's the 'Black Pearl', actually, and it isn't a hulk- it's quite a nice ship. It has good lines."

Trinn gave a sparkling laugh. "I'm sure it does. You have exactly that sort of … well, masculine nature that notices things like that. And fancy calling _this_ a pearl!"

Ann rolled her eyes. At times, Trinn could be quite self-absorbed, only noticing when she was about to do something ungraceful or dirty, so one could get away with a lot of sarcasm directed at her. But at the moment, Ann just didn't feel like bothering with a witty retort, even though there would be no backlash.

She was trapped as a pirate- granted, it was much more interesting than being a maid or an eternal prospective wife- and there was no way to stop being a pirate. And for some strange reason, Ann felt responsible for Trinn. She had a strange velleity to do something femininely reassuring, such as putting an arm around Trinn or patting her on the back. But it passed as soon as it came; Trinn would likely laugh that horrible burbling giggle and make Ann look like an ungainly idiot. Besides, she'd never been much of one for feminine gestures.

NB: Thank you to everyone for reviewing—I would have emailed you all personally, but you were too numerous. (Yes, eleven is numerous. Myriad, even.) And to Araeph, as usual, for beta-ing. U r teh Gr8esT!!!1!11!!

Sorry for the long time updating- hit a rough spot and English work made me forget where I was going. Excuses, excuses.

Is this chapter really as short as it seems to me?


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